348 Chapter 15
political rights such as voting and citizenship as a way to fully integrate
themselves into their societies, they were also very concerned with
social, economic, and educational issues. When Booker T. Washington
developed an innovative way to advance precisely these causes, and
actively recruited Cuban students through his alumni, business, and
military networks, Cuban leaders responded positively, reviewing his
educational philosophy in their newspapers, and sending dozens of
students to study in the heart of the empire while their parents stayed
behind and participated in their own nation’s affairs. Examining this
exchange as the United States invaded Cuba and Puerto Rico will fur-
ther our understanding of the strategies used by black leaders in post-
emancipation societies to move forward in the face of racism, nation-
alist goals and imperialist aspirations.
In the Tuskegee-Cuba connection and Tuskegee-Puerto Rico con-
nection, we see a particular interest on behalf of Afro-descended peo-
ple in economic methods of advancement, and an understanding that
education was linked to economic improvement. Education and eco-
nomic advancement were seen by leaders in both areas as crucial to
racial equality and racial uplift. In particular, Afro-Cubans looking at
the example of African Americans in the United States noted their
success in the economic realm, as well as the ways that improvement
in socioeconomic status and education might be able to mitigate the
worst parts of Jim Crow. With the U.S. invasion and occupation of
Cuba and Puerto Rico, and the attempted transfer of strategies for
racial uplift from one place to another, these observations became all
the more relevant, and were transformed into action as dozens Afro-
Cuban students attended Tuskegee over the course of fifteen years.
However, putting into practice this transfer of ideas revealed the limits
of sharing strategies in two different contexts, despite their increased
connections—socially, politically, and particularly economically, as the
Cuban sugar industry became oriented to the US market and US capi-
tal sustained and increasingly controlled Cuban sugar.
This exchange was complicated particularly because it coincided
with a US imperial project to Americanize its new island possessions